With an enterprise-friendly combination of hardware, software and professional services, IBM should be well placed to work with wary CxOs as they try to understand the extent to which Cloud Computing makes sense within their own business.

Announcements earlier this year, as I said at the time, seemed geared toward building and sign-posting an easy on-ramp to the Cloud for those already comfortable with IBM and its products, but the indications were that IBM had bigger plans.

I spoke with Kristof Kloeckner recently, to learn more about the company’s intentions and its interest in encouraging the development of standards. Kristof is CTO and VP Cloud Computing Platforms at IBM, and has much to say about the company’s current and future direction during our 50 minute conversation.